"You're not running away from anything," the old man said. "You'll find out. Follow my directions and you'll find out. You're not running away. You can get out of the flood water for a while, sit on the bank, until the water drops and clears a little."
Stan looked into the old man's face a long moment. "Who the hell are you anyway?"
"That doesn't matter, Doctor Morrison. Now will you get out of here! Move on down the road!"
Stan finally nodded and took Anna's arm and they started toward the Special. "All right, but what about you?" he asked the old man.
"I'll make out. You just be concerned about yourself, Doctor Morrison. This isn't the first time I've helped someone off the road. It won't be the last time either, I hope."
He waved to them as the Special, without any limit to its speed now except the limitations of a driver's nerve, roared away toward the mountains.
Now the special became anonymous on the Freeway, one of countless cars hurtling down the super ten-lane Freeway, its license changed, its controls and checkers cut off, its sovereignty returned to it by a nameless old man, a box of wrenches, and a roll of wire.
Three hundred miles farther on, the Freeway began a long banked curve; a thick wall of cottonwoods, willows and smaller brush lined the side where a creek rushed out of a cleft in the lower hills and ran along the Freeway's edge.
Stan started to slow down.